Faulkner's "abrogated" and "inviolate", a literary pendulum of the spirit Old South.

 

Faulkner's Pendulum is comprised in this avid Faulkner reader's brain in two words, which contrast, like "bad" and "good", but hold to the literary pretense of Faulkner's artful scribbles.

Inviolate

and

Abrogated

This is to say, strong or withstanding, as of the Southern spirit, or in contrast, old and forgotten, ala the old Southern "Rebel" spirit; Faulkner wanted to hold onto the best of those attitudes, not discarding the entire lifestyle, but retaining some of that charm of the old South.  One had only to note the admittedly depressed status of blacks in Faulkner's novels, save for one child, who was, in childhood, held as the equal of the young heir of the estate.  So one bright point in a plethora of Southern novels.

As to the women, the spirit, not the maidenhead, the iron survival instinct of the woman, her sex drive, her admitted stubborn intent in the face of all the world around them, such as in Sanctuary, with Temple Drake, or Sound and the Fury with Caddie Compson.  Quentin Compson faced the struggle writ large and could only solve her quandry through the dubious circumstance of encouraging her overseer's murder.  See The Hamlet, The Village, and The Town.

Spirit, as it were, in all its bad and good facets, alternatingly positive and negative, and often both states at once.  The Light in August stands as one of Faulkner's true racial books, with its mixed-race subject in the form of orphaned Joe Christmas.  Faulkner wrote such that Christmas's white side hated his black side, and the black side hated his white side.  In a sense, Faulkner was making no apologies, simply reflecting something of the reality on the ground, as it was in the real world.

I can imagine easily a Faulkner passage where, and it was never written, a young woman's very maidenhead was either inviolate or abrogated: it was a watchword for the spiritual condition of the person, the astounding contrary attitude to defy some crux in the world, and to do that, not seemingly for gain, but propelled by something infinitely more human than that.